The Gold Knight: Cirque du Soleil returns for Sunday’s Oscars

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — This Sunday, prepare for what The Gold Knight is calling Cirque du Oscars. World-renowned Cirque du Soleil will be returning to the Oscars stage here for the first since in a decade.

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The troupe of talented acrobats will pay tribute to the Academy Awards on Hollywood’s biggest night, according to telecast producers Brian Grazer and Don Mischer on Feb 16.

The performance will feature the largest Cirque cast ever assembled for a single act — with more than 50 international artists from Cirque du Soleil productions around the world performing, according to the producers.

Music by Academy Award-nominated composer Danny Elfman will accompany the performance. He also scored the music for Cirque du Soleil’s show “IRIS, A Journey through the World of Cinema,” which recently went on hiatus until March 24. The show uses the Oscar’s Kodak Theatre year round.

This is the second time Cirque du Soleil has performed during an Academy Awards telecast. The first appearance was at the 74th Academy Awards, the first year the show was at the Kodak.

The performance “sparked discussions about creating a permanent show at the Kodak Theatre and resulted in the creation of IRIS,” according to the Academy press release.

This will also be the last time the troupe performs at a Kodak Theatre Oscars, since Kodak recently asked to have its name pulled from the Hollywood theater.

Watch the performance this Sunday, during the 84th Academy Awards on ABC. The show also airs live in more than 225 countries worldwide.

Cirque du Soleil, French for “Circus of the Sun,” is a Montréal-based entertainment company, that seeks to “evoke the imagination, invoke the senses and provoke the emotions of people around the world,” according to its website. It was founded in 1984 by two former street performers, Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gauthier.